1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the disclosure relate in general to the field of computers and similar technologies, and in particular to software utilized in this field. Still more particularly, it relates to validating the generation of globalized versions of software programs.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many of today's commercial software programs are marketed on a global basis. As such, they often require localization to address the specific needs of different markets, regions, or countries. Localization efforts generally require more than translating text in a software program's user interface. In addition, translation of text, dates, times, numbers, and currency values must be displayed in the customary format for the locale. Furthermore, the software program must also be able to operate with the local character encoding standard. These efforts can be time consuming, tedious and expensive, especially when dealing with complex software programs that need to support multiple locales.
One approach to internationalizing software programs to support multiple locales is to store locale-specific information in a separate localization file. As the software program's code is executed, the locale-specific information is simply read from the appropriate localization file and used accordingly. One advantage to this approach is that the information in the localization file can be modified without disturbing the internationalized executable code, and likewise, the executable code can be modified without disturbing the locale-specific information. These localization files may be in any number of formats, including compiled message catalogs, HTML files, and Java resource bundles that include properties files.
Properties files are of particular interest to Global Verification Testers since they can be examined to validate the localization process. However, it is not unusual for large software programs to have many properties files authored by many developers located across many geographies. As a result, it can be very cumbersome to find the exact source file that is displaying a defective localization text string or other information. Currently, there is no simple method for global verification testers to uniquely index text values for all languages. Instead, they are required to manually search through both the resource library (e.g., CMVC, Clearquest, etc.) and the installed software program (e.g., properties, classes, JAR and WAR files, etc.).